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How to Decarboxylate Cannabis

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If you're wanting to make edibles or tinctures from cannabis, decarboxylation is a crucial step! Decarbing the cannabis you use in medibles and tinctures will make them safer and more effective.

Decarboxylation happens very slowly when cannabis is cured, but we can use an oven to speed up and complete the process. Decarbing your cannabis allows you to convert the THCA found in your dried buds and trim to THC. This will allow your medibles and tinctures to be more potent and take effect more quickly. Decarbing most often occurs when cannabis is smoked, so this process doesn't have an opportunity to occur when making butters, oils and tinctures - you have to do it beforehand!

Beyond turning the THCA found in cannabis to THC, decarboxylation also has one other awesome benefit: lowering the risk of botulism in your medibles. If you don't properly decarb your cannabis, the moisture from it can cause botulism bacteria to grow in your tinctures, butters or oils. And I'm assuming you probably don't want that on top of why you're medicating with cannabis already. ;)

For more information on decarboxylation and also a nice scientific experiment, I recommend reading this article.

In this instructable I'll cover how we choose to decarboxylate cannabis - there are loads of ways to do it, but this is our preferred method.

Step 1: Tools + Materials

To do this you'll need:

an oven set to 220 F/105 C

a baking sheet

parchment paper

sugar leaf trim, ground bud, or kief

If using sugar leaves or kief, no other processing is necessary. If you're using full buds, grind them roughly before proceeding. You want things to be broken down well so the cannabis releases all the moisture it's holding.

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You decarb in the oven before to convert the THCa to THC. The THCa can't be processed by the body. This doesn't happen unless you get the temperature over 100C, higher than the boiling temp of water or butter.

Butter is an emulsion of fat in water - thus boliling starts at about 100 deg C. As it is not pure water, but solution of proteins, salts and hydrocarbons its boiling point will be higher thus 110-120 deg C

Decarbing, removes the acid, makes it more potent, & removes the moisture. It's the same as drying fresh herbs in the oven. When you do it with fresh herbs, it brings the oils out, enhancing the flavor. You want a dry mix to make your butter.

If you use a flame to heat the product you will end up releasing the THC into the air instead of converting it within the plant. This what happens when you vape, heats up without burning, unless you set your vape in high then it produces smoke.

Canna Honey? THC is soluble in oil and alcohol, so your decarboxylated product then goes into coconut oil, butter or alcohol - then it is used for edibles. If you put it straight into honey it won't be working well

Yes, this instructable is absolutely terrible! You can fix it by doing it again. At only 220 it would take at least an hour to decarb. It's not a matter of just drying the bud out, it's a matter of releasing the carbon from the THC. The best way is arguably to do it at 240 for 30 minutes but it takes at least an hour at 220.